One room almost done!

I've been getting overwhelmed at everything that needs to be done so I've been trying to focus on one room, the bedroom. You can see how scary it was before, I think it's come a long way and I'm pretty proud of myself, I did this all on my own!
There is a little cove area where I plan on putting my computer.
The before picture:



After! The color here is not quite right, the next pic is more accurate.


And here are my new sconces. I am kicking myself for not taking a before picture, you should have seen the things that were up there before. The were candle sconces, off white with pink, green and blue flowers, with an orangy-red bulb. Scary.

Painting

Let me start off by saying that I never knew what a huge pain in the ass painting is. The prep work really sucks. I have so much wood with built ins and trim and doors, etc.. that I don't know if I'll ever get it done! One step at a time. I do have a helper. One of the main issues was the living room and the vaulted ceiling. I had hired a painter and they guy flaked out on me, never showed up or called. So my friend James is helping me for free (well, maybe for some pizza and White Castles). You can see the way it started out, with the wood stained black(ish) and pink painted in between. I'm going to be boring and do all white for the ceiling. Originally I wanted to put the color the walls will be (light lime green) on the pink area between the white beams, but that would just be so much more work. Too much taping, too much detail, too much to drive me even further insane than I already am from this!! Sorry for the crappy quality of this pic, I forgot my camera and had to use my cell phone.

A cool find

I'm in the midst of another disaster (don't I make this whole owning a home thing sound so fun?!) involving a permit (or rather lack there of) but I did manage to find something good in the mean time. As we tore out the wall above the fireplace we found a bunch of old newspaper that was used as insulation. It's enclosed in this bag, which has preserved it pretty well. It's not quite in full sheets, but there is definitely enough to read. The papers are all dated between Feb and June of 1929 so far. I've taken a few pictures. I'll take some more as I go through them.

Another unexpected problem

OK, so my living room had some ugly wood paneling that I had just planned on painting. Here's what we started with.



So my friend James talks me into removing it. We take off the first panel and everything is looking good. We get to the third panel and find out the real reason this paneling was put up.



That's actually a little worse that it was, we had torn some of the plaster down ourselves at that point. The problem with this house is that it's had some moisture damage. The good news is that the source of the moisture has been fixed, but they just covered up the interior damage. So, we decided to go ahead and tear down all the plaster down to the lathe. I guess I shouldn't have used the flash when there was so much dust in the air.



Now we have to put up some drywall, hopefully this Thursday. From what I've been told it's fairly easy, so we'll see how this turns out. People at work have given me tutorials. We have decided to tear down the lathe and put in some insulation before we put the drywall up. We also have some caulking to do along the chimney on the outside, seeing as how once we tore down the plaster we could see light coming in where it met the house, so I guess after everything this was a good thing.

Up next: Tomorrow I am having another electrician out to put in another outlet in the bedroom and rewire the sconces in the living room so they are on a switch. Thursday I am having the ceiling and beams painted, and on Friday I am have having the tub re-tiled. Next week the hardwood floors are being re-finished. Then that's about it for the major stuff. All that's left are the things I can work on myself!!

Small progress

I'm in the midst of another unexpected problem that I'll post about later, but I wanted to put up one small thing. I took down the old celiing light in the bedroom and replaced it with one that will match the sconces I plan on putting on the wall. You can see the ugly green wall in the background a bit. Painting that and the bedroom ceiling are next on my list.

New windows

The windows are finally done and it's a pretty big step in feeling like I am actually making some progress. The first picture is before, the second is after the windows were installed and the final one is after the outside was wrapped in PVC. It's nice that now I don't have to worry about the wood frame rotting or paint peeling.

Right now it looks a little random, but after I finish the rest of the exterior stuff I plan on doing it should look great. I'm going to remove the other awning over the front door. I may replace it with another one at some point, not sure yet. I'll be painting all the rest of the trim white, as well as the front storm door, and then I'll actually be painting the house another color, possibly a light plummy gray or a light sage green color. That should look better with the white trim.

Waving the white flag

So, while the bathroom waits to be finished I started to focus on the dining room, thinking it would be one of the easier rooms to get done. Thought I could strip down the wallpaper, slap some paint on it and be good to go. But as I learn through this process, nothing is ever easy. Here's how the wall looked when I started:


Here's what I found under that wallpaper:



Uh. Ok. For more of my nightmare, check out this picture.
The area above the window had to be filled in with plaster. I believe the green stuff is some ancient skim coating that was done before the original wallpaper was put up. Add to that a couple areas where some water damage from an old (now fixed) roof leak was fixed and the pink joint compound I've spread on to fix some areas where the original paper actually did come off, and this is one scary mofo picture!

Anyway, this wall is pretty much f'ed for paint, as I don't have the time or frankly the patience to do the amount of skimcoating that would have to be done to make this paintable. So, I guess I'm going to have to put more wallpaper up! I know I was so against it, I just don't think I have a choice here, if for nothing else, for the sake of my sanity! There is actually some pretty cool wallpaper out there, this is from a book called Simple Space, and here is what I've chosen.

I'm only going to re-paper the 2 walls that had it before, the others will be painted a color that I'll match from the paper. This brings me back to my original color scheme for the living room, black and white with lime green accents. I had switched to a purplish-gray accents, but since the living room really flows into the dining room and I couldn't find any paper that would have worked with that, I'm back to plan A.